Friendship
by Sophocles
Summary: [slash; complete] James knows that there are no lines between their friendship and a true love that was meant to be. If only Sirius felt the same way...


Please see my author page for my SLASH POLICY. All flames must be coherent.

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**FRIENDSHIP**

AN ALPHABET MONOLOGUE

Also archived at the SiriusxJames Yahoo! Group. 

            All my life boils down to one thing... you.           

            Black hair framing a heart-shaped face, an angled chin, the smooth curves of your pale neck define the your aesthetic radiance. Christ, but how enchanting you look, high cheekbones and hard muscle and long legs! Delicate, yes, your features ascetic from so many years of marriage into the same families, but also strong, wiry, deceptive force in thin arms that punch and hit and write and hug. Everyone thinks, _knows_, you're handsome, but me, I know better, because you aren't just handsome, you're _beautiful_, so damned beautiful. Fiery, ardent in your lively passion, lashes long, lips red, always a smile ready for the world, and for... me.          

            God, I want you so badly the hunger burns inside me where nothing, no one else touches. Having you so near me, skin so close, _breathbrushblinkblue_, blue like your eyes, the cobalt-grey of the early morning sea upon which my dreams float around me and away from me. It's like you're a fucking mirage, tantalizing yet so untouchable, because the moment I try, you'll disappear, leave and run and where will I be then?          

            Just looking at the pained, yet innocently eager appeal that your face arranges itself into as you arrive, shivering and huddling, on my doorstep is enough to make my heart melt and my arms open; did you honestly think I would, that I _could_ refuse you shelter? Kind of sweet, actually, how charmingly vulnerable you look; amazing, how with all the professors' talk of your mischief and trickery, your eyes with their poignant cobalt shine are so wide and guileless and scared.     

            Like sherbet on a summer day, I find that I'm melting in your hands, all sticky-like, and that's what it feels like when you hug me tightly, skin _coldpaleicyblue_ against skin, and also later, when you sleep soundly next to me in my bed, and my travelling, curious eyes detect the faint traces of bruises along your shoulder, arm, and back, where your robes normally hide. Merlin, I hate your parents for what they've done to you, but even more so because they had something so precious, so beautiful, and they lost it and didn't even care, while here I am, fighting and struggling to earn you, to have you here in my house and in my arms. 

            Nothing compares to that feeling I get, the sweet-warm rush in my stomach and head, when I wake up in the morning and you are the first thing I see, pale and tired, but no worse for your wear. Oh, how much it hurts, _disappointmentlovehunger _when the tips of your fingers brush against my arm and I feel the heat of your body against mine in an almost-hug, only to realize you haven't awoken, that you're not touching me on purpose and the only reason we lie together in the same bed is because you wouldn't hear of me sleeping on the couch and we certainly couldn't put _you_ there, could we? Perhaps you would even be _disgusted_ if you knew what I feel for you, the longing and love that shines behind my eyes every time they fall on you, tall and lithe and slender, and it is this 'perhaps', this chance of destroying our friendship that destroys me inside, and keeps my lips silent. Quit while you're ahead, they say, and I most certainly am ahead, because even if I can't hug you and kiss you and love you even while you lie beside me on my own bed, you are, above all things, my friend, and if that's as close to you as I can get, so be it, because it's worth it, just to see the way the light falls in beams across your sun-kissed skin and the fluttering of curved black lashes when you awake and realize, a slow smile curving your lips, that you've escaped the travesty that you called a home.

            Realization is immediately followed by embarrassment and contrition, and like the silly git you are, you apologize repeatedly for bothering me late last night and for taking up space in my bed and for the trouble that you undoubtedly must have been, spending the night at my house. Surely you realize how _happy_ I am, feeling your long legs brush against mine, your hair on my skin, silky and smooth under the palm of my hand as I brush it out of your face while you sleep! The nights that I've spent, lying awake, wondering what it would be like to have you next to me, to have you in my bed, not to seek refuge from the nightmares that haunt you, but to be near me, _with_ me, loving me as much as I love you!

            Underneath the smooth, calm façade I hide behind as I nonchalantly reassure you of the welcome of your presence at my house, pain and warmth and emotion burst through me in torrents, tearing my heart to shreds as I recall stolen moments huddled together under white sheets, murmured assurances and whispered confidences, secret forbidden tears that flowed down the shapely arch of your cheeks as you related to me your greatest fears and insecurities. Vividly do I remember the abject misery and utter resolution on your face as you told me, sharply and surely, that you could never understand love, never see it, never feel it, never taste it, having never received it; how I wanted to cry when you told me that your life, your family, your Blackness had stolen your will to live and laugh and feel, and when you said, holding my Quidditch-roughened hand to your chest, that you had a heart—my darling _stella_!—to be shot at or stabbed in, nothing more... [1]

            What wouldn't I give to be the only exception to that rule, selfish as I am?

            Xeric sands rub into fresh wounds every day, and then some, whenever my gaze falls on you, smiling even through your veil of pain, triumphant even in your moment of sorrow, laughing so beautifully as to render all other song soundless, shining so brightly as to render all other stars colourless. You are the one that haunts my sleep, my dreams, my every waking moment... your face is the one I see when I furtively touch myself in the surreptitious silences of the night, muffling my sounds with my pillow, lips pressed into soft cotton wishing that it were your skin...

            Zealous embraces and tokens of your _friendship_ such that you give me, Sirius, only make it hurt so much more.

**FINIS**

*

[1] The line about having a heart to be shot at or stabbed in, nothing more, comes from Dickens' _Great Expectations_, and the word _stella _is Latin (and Italian) for 'star'. I thought the line and the Latin would be eminently suitably, seeing as the quote is from a young lady named E_stella_, the beautiful yet unattainable love interest of the book's protagonist, and also because of the connection between the names (Estella = stella = star; Sirius = the brightest star in the heavens)


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